Final answer:
A non-compete agreement is a contract that prevents an employee from working with competitor firms to protect trade secrets. Related commercial strategies like predatory pricing and trademarks are also employed to maintain competitive advantage and market position.
Step-by-step explanation:
A non-compete agreement (NCA) attempts to prevent an employee with special knowledge of secrets from one organization from working in a competing organization in order to prevent that second organization from benefiting from the worker's special knowledge of secrets. NCAs are essential tools in the realm of business to safeguard trade secrets, which are methods of production kept secret by the producing firm. This also relates to another concept known as predatory pricing, where an existing firm uses sharp but temporary price cuts to discourage new competition, which can be a technique to uphold market dominance and create barriers to entry for potential competitors. Another related concept is a trademark, which is an identifying symbol or name for a particular good that can only be used by the firm that registered that trademark, serving as a unique identifier and protecting the brand's identity.